Another Nursery May Have Canker

A Hillsborough County citrus nursery may be the first Florida site found infected with citrus canker this year, state agriculture officials said Tuesday.

Hillsboro Wholesale Nursery Inc. of Valrico, near Tampa, was quarantined Monday after preliminary laboratory tests showed that citrus plants there may be contaminated by the fast-spreading bacterial disease.

If tests confirm canker's presence, Hillsboro Wholesale would be the 10th Florida citrus nursery found infected since the disease surfaced last August -- and the first since last December.

''This isn't good news, but we've been expecting some isolated outbreaks this spring,'' said Richard Gaskalla, assistant director of the state Agriculture Department's division of plant industry. The disease generally produces its characteristic brown and yellow spots during spring and summer, when citrus leaves are growing rapidly.

Final test results for samples taken from the Hillsborough nursery are expected late this week. Symptoms of the disease were spotted during a regular monthly state inspection of the 18-acre nursery on March 27, said Linda Perry, a spokeswoman for the plant division in Gainesville.

Follow-up laboratory tests showed that nine sam-

ples from a nursery greenhouse were suspicious, Perry said, and healthy plants have since been inoculated to see if the disease will develop.

In an effort to stop the canker from spreading, state and federal inspectors burned more than 3.8 million trees last fall at the nine infected nurseries. They also destroyed more than 3.5 million plants at 58 nurseries and at more than 500 groves and retail outlets that had received plants from an infected source. No commercial groves have been found infected. Canker is not harmful to humans but causes severe defoliation of citrus trees. The disease rarely kills mature trees, but it makes them less productive. Citrus experts say that the disease could cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually if left unchecked. There is no chemical control, which is why all infected trees are burned. The disease last occurred in Florida more than 50 years ago.

If canker is confirmed at the Hillsborough nursery, all of the plants will be destroyed, state agriculture officials said.

Mike Snedeker, manager of the Hillsborough nursery, said the company is waiting anxiously for final chemical test results.

Gaskalla said the state's nursery industry is just beginning to recover from last year's eradication program and a seven-month ban on shipments that was lifted April 1. About $6.2 million of the $6.8 million in a joint, federal-state fund has been spent to help nursery and grove owners offset their canker-related losses, which have been estimated at more than $9 million.

The remaining $600,000 is committed to growers who have not yet claimed their money, Gaskalla said, and it is not known how the Hillsborough operation would be reimbursed if the plants are destroyed.

''The U.S. Department of Agriculture program is an open-ended account, but there is no more state money for reimbursement,'' Gaskalla said. The state Legislature, which convened last week, is studying the canker-reimbursement program.